Gameplay
__FORCETOC__ 'The combat system' The main feature of the game is the sword play. When facing one or more enemies in a sword battle, you mainly only have your sword, no shield, to defend yourself with, and so do they. All attacking and defending in the game will be completely manual, like no other game currently. In other games you usually have 1-4 default attack directions and animations, and most games only have one blocking animation that pretty much blocks any incoming attack, except for example the Mount & Blade fighting system. It has 4 vs 4 attack & block directions. In this game however, the goal is to have an infinitely higher creative method for the player, and therefore it must be "completely" manual. Manual attack & block directions This will be one of the very most important systems to get right. In essence: WASD keys for movement, mouse controls camera direction and player orientation, but while holding attack or block, the mouse will control the sword. The mouse controls both the attacking and the blocking. Therefore it is for instance possible to use an attack to hit away an incoming sword. This makes attacking and blocking two very similar methods. In practice this could mean: You're walking on a road and you come across a group of strong orcs or orcs like the uruk-hai kind, from the Lord of the Rings (OK... let's hope not that many... for starters). One of them comes in with a big slash from your upper left. By this time you will have drawn your sword and are ready to improvise. 'Defense' For blocking the attack, you would have to hold the right mouse button and move it to the character's left. The swords will collide and you could be ready to make a move. Another option would be to use the left mouse button to physically hit the sword away from yourself with force, instead of just stopping the attack. To be able to get enough force to hit the opponent's sword away, you would most likely need to have a greater swing. More depth in the "attack" section. A third option could be to evade the attack, by ducking aside, if your dodge is accurate enough. This will most likely also be mouse controlled, with a key combination. Sword defense: Attacks can come from many directions. Depending on what kind of sword the enemy carries, you could also expect stabs - however, they would not be the priority of a uruk orc with their typical swords, if that is the theme we're going for, for the uruk-kind. So variations of left and right swings can be blocked by moving your block to the left or right. However, there should exist a way to alter the angle of the block, from a vertical to horizontal degree. For example, an overhead attack should be blocked with a horizontal block. But such attacks could also come from below, or even diagonally, so you will need to be able to alter all dimensions of blocking attacks - the height of your hands (vertical movement), the left-right movement (horizontal movement), the angle of the sword and the distance from your body. The final solution for this is yet unknown, but there are some options to consider for now. While holding the right mouse button and moving left and right, your sword would stay pretty much vertical and you move your hands to the left and right. Moving your mouse forward would tilt your sword away from the player, and backwards would tilt the sword over the player's head or shoulders (yes, that would mean the possibility to block incoming attacks from behind, if you're very good). This deals with a 3D space, but so far without taking angles into account. One option could be to make a key-hold enable the mouse to control the vertical angle. An example could be to hold shift and right-click when you detect an overhead or diagonal attack, and move the mouse into an angle that will block the incoming attack. Once you release shift, or whichever button modifies it (but keep right-mouse down), the mouse will control the right-left-up-down movement again, with your new angle. When you release right mouse again, you will return to your standard sword position, or if you choose to attack right away, it will animate from its current position into the new attack. Shift was only used as an example. An alternative could perhaps be to have the angle movement be altered by holding down left and right mouse button at the same time. However, it could produce complications if it gets mixed up invoulentarily with the attack function, as you are going to use the block and the attack function quite rapidly. Besides, there might be other handy uses for a left and right mouse click combination. For now, only time will tell. 'Attack' Holding left mouse button means you will attack, or hit away. It functions a bit differently than blocking, in control. When blocking, moving left or right will keep the sword horizontal. When holding attack, moving the sword to your left will swing the sword horizontally to your left, as one would naturally do to gain the swing needed to make a hit towards the opponent. After you've pulled it back, which will require very little mouse movement, you can move the mouse to the right to make a swing from your left towards the right - towards the side of the enemy. Moving the mouse up and down alters the height of the swing. If you rather want to do an overhead attack, you pull the mouse backwards to pull your sword over your head or your shoulder, and push it forward to send the sword forward, and moving to the left or right during the attack will alter the direction. This way you could also make diagonal hits, by pulling your sword back and pushing both forward and to a side. This will come naturally with training. For stabs, there will probably be a key-hold to be able to pull the sword back and forward while keeping the sword tip infront, without making a swing. Similarly, this would allow you to stab in any angle from your character's view. These are the main features of the combat, but I have a simple philosophy for now (though not necessarily "simple" to go through with): If Aragorn can do it in the movies, there should possibly exist a gameplay equivalent. I don't mean automatic animated super moves from key-combos. The beauty of this system is that you'll do everything yourself and it will actually feel like you're in a sword fight. Videos to come later. Camera and orientation You play the game in third person, the distance from the camera yet not decided. When walking, running and exploring, the camera will face the direction of the character's viewpoint. This means you will be able to turn quite fast, like any human, but in a realistic way. You can't do spin around your own axis 10 times in a second, and you can't look where your eyes can't see, except some brief distance behind you. When holding attack and block, the mouse no longer controls the camera, but the camera follows the sword, in a smooth and subtle manner. This means that your camera won't get stuck in bad angles when fighting, and it's still possible to turn to the sides without releasing attack or block. Your character will turn with the sword when it goes far on the right or left. The possibility will always be there to turn quickly around when not holding attack or block, but there may also be the option to add a key press to make the character turn more quickly around while attacking or blocking. Archery For now, I don't want the game to have a lot of emphasis on archery, but I think it could be an interesting add, if realistic. However, it would be disappointing to be able to just pick your bow and take out any challenge ahead, considering that shields will not be a very numerous tool among most enemies. The main excitement should be in the sword sparring. Still, I view archery as a very interesting add if you were part of a big battle with many friends and foes, such as in a battle for a castle or city. You would have to either buy arrows or make them yourself (would require time), and pick up unbroken arrows. Having more than 30-ish might be unrealistic as well, and I like the fact that when you're out of arrows, it's over to sword fighting, unless you pick up more arrows when you have the time. I don't know yet how to balance this in the game. However, to make it as realistic and fun as possible, archery shouldn't be the easy way out necessarily. Most likely there won't be an aiming spot like for most games. When shooting with a bow, the camera might go first person, and you'll have to use eye estimation to hit your target. It should also not be completely impossible to shoot while running. It should be a personal player skill, rather than a restrictive game rule. It must be balanced in some way, however, to avoid abuse and lack of realism. I don't know yet how archery at all will be balanced with shields. You would in case be expected to avoid arrows yourself, and it could make the game a bit at unease. Time will tell. 'Movement and traveling' 'General movement' For general movement, the WASD keys will be used. The default will be a jog, but there should also be the possibility to walk, and to sprint. Sprinting could be useful in battle, but there should be a way of balancing it. If players had the choice, many would most likely sprint at all distances, and perhaps feel disappointed or annoyed if they had to wait for him to recover. One alternative is to do the FIFA-approach, where the players gradually become more tired when running a lot and thus run slower after quite some time. This would perhaps force the player to make a choice on how much time to spend running (or how fast) compared to jogging. Even though the environment will be very pretty to look at, it is not uncommon that people prefer the fastest way to get somewhere. This can give flashbacks to the time spent rolling down Hyrule Fields in Zelda instead of running, even if you weren't sure if it was really faster. Climbing Even though it's not assassin's creed, I think climbing should be possible to a certain extent. At least where it's natural. The possibility to climb in trees is interesting to consider, if you'd need to hide or go for an ambush from above on a coming group of orcs. However climbing rooftops in villages and cities would probably not have much purpose. However, I will not close my mind on this. 'Traveling' The map will be huge, and there will be many places to go. Something must probably at some time compensate for the realism of traveling - it takes time to move. Even though it could be tempting to make the game so real-time and realistic that you had to literally walk through the map, it could be very demotivating when you realize it could be nice to go and explore/quest more on a previous location. So a good way to do this might perhaps be to have some sort of "quick travel" to locations where you have already been (Skyrim has a version of this), or to the outskirts of those locations, to add realism and surprise regarding what has happened there since you left. Maybe quick traveling would require factors such as enough food for the journey, or expenses gone to food if you buy it yourself. See more on "Food" for details. Also see problem related to quick traveling in the bottom of "Progress and character death". Though, since quick traveling lacks some realism compared to the other features of the game, there might be other solutions as well. One option could be to have some kind of transport, like horse wagons that you can pay to go to a nearby town, and which is clearly faster than going by foot. This could make it more likely that people stay longer in each area, and do more work there. A consequence I'm unsure of, could be that people always use transport to go to a village, even if they haven't been there. Even though horse carriages could get attacked, it might take away some of the excitement that comes from encountering enemies by foot. A solution for this could be to have the horse wagon driver immediately turn around and flee once he sees enemies, and you'll have to do the rest by foot (and possibly fight the enemies if you like). So it's a disadvantage of taking the transport between villages if it's in an area with much conflict. A solution could be that horse carriage drivers would refuse to take routes in conflicted areas. How this works for enemy groups of just 3-4 orcs and small numbers, I don't know yet. 'Food' I'd like to include the concept of getting food, as long as it doesn't seriously stagger the progress or the flow in the game. You could for example hunt when in the wild or buy food in villages/cities. It should be able to last for a few days once you've done it. It shouldn't be a matter of life and death, but let's say if your character goes without food for too long, the energy will be seriously reduced. If you go for a full day without any food in your inventory, chances are you won't perform that well the next day. It could be enough to have food in your inventory and not actually choose when to eat it. 'Game progress, character death and injury' Progress and character death One of the biggest challenges currently, is figuring out what happens upon character death. I don't know yet how saving your progress should work. There are some factors to consider: *You are going to die quite a bit unless you've become very good. *You are going to get injured quite a bit. *Saving before a battle and fighting it many times until you make it could... 1. be demotivating once you do get it, 2. be very fun and very good training and 3. make nothing a "real" challenge ever again? Some options that could be worth laying eggs on: *Having "safe spots" where you can save your game. These spots could be in villages, cities and places where your allies are under command. They could also be on sites before you enter dangerous areas.. (Cons: 1. People will predict dangers. 2. Areas of danger are very big - long roads, big mountains. Also, people play longer than they should and come late for dinner because they need to save their progress) *They could be in ally areas and in the woods, where you're easily hidden. *The game autosaves inventory and world events upon death, and respawns you to a place nearby. The enemy or enemy group that killed you are either re-generated by the game or recycled, as in: the battle was lost, new dangers and enemies are generated in random locations. In this sense, you respawn with the items you had potentially gained, and the world acts as if nothing happened and as if the enemies that killed you weren't at the place you were. (Consequences: It could mess up the mechanics of the game - If a horde of orcs were on their way to loot a village, they will go towards their goal unless they are killed. If they kill you, they would naturally move along, not disappear. I don't know how unnatural it would be for you to respawn, for instance 2-5 simulated minutes after they killed you. This could result in the player choosing to chase their tracks and fight them again, but closer to their goal. If so: If you killed 50% of them last time you met, before they killed you, does the full group exist again when you've respawned? Or do you take out more and more enemies while dying and chasing after them again, until they're gone? I would personally go with the full group-option. Either you are able to fight everyone at once, or you aren't good enough and need help (or second tries). Another consequence I'm not sure of is: If you try to fight a group of enemies heading towards a village, but you die and respawn... what happens if you quick travel to this village (granted that you've been to this place before). Does the game simulate you traveling faster than the orcs and reaching the village before them? Are they faster than you and you reach them in the middle of the raiding? Is it even possible to get past the group of orcs, for example through the woods, or are there no available closed-off areas/hidden roads that can hide you from them? Is it then possible to even quick travel there without encountering the orcs on the road? This needs more work. Injury When you're in battle and get hit by a sword hard enough to be wounded, you will realistically not be able to fight at full strength. If you've been badly hurt, actions are harder to do and require more strength, and you're likely to lose the battle. If you do survive even after being badly hurt, you will need to recover. This shouldn't take so long that the game becomes staggered by hours of limping and resting in the woods. But I don't want you to be able to go along as if nothing happened when you were hurt. Another possible aspect: What happens if you get ''very ''badly hurt, as in you lose a limb, if this is even possible for your character? Can you still move the sword with your remaining hand? Does the limb magically gradually grow out after the (doubtful) victory, if you should win after all? Another possibility is that you can't lose limbs, but be seriously reduced, as in... you can't stand on your legs, you can't use one of your arms until you recover a bit? I suspect the latter would work better in the game and would flow better. Seasons and other cycles hey my name is jon and i write here now